Research Triangle Park, NC November 14, 2002 SciQuest, a provider of solutions for the life sciences, industrial research and higher education markets, this week unveiled the key components of the company's strategy to integrate supply management principles into its suite of e-procurement and materials management solutions.
SciQuest said its suite of e-procurement and materials management solutions integrate the principles promoted by such supply management organizations as the Supply Chain Council (SCC) and the Institute for Supply Management (ISM).
These industry organizations encourage the adoption of a standard process reference model for communicating supply chain management practices and provide an overarching framework, standard terminology, common metrics with associated benchmarks and best practices for evaluating, positioning and implementing supply-chain application software.
SciQuest asserted that it is the first company of its kind to adapt such supply management practices to the "innovation supply chain," a methodology used to integrate suppliers and research-intensive organizations to ensure materials and information are made accessible and distributed in such a way as to foster innovation, reduce costs and improve quality.
"By adapting proven supply management principles to the innovation supply chain, we are dramatically improving the way pharmaceutical, biotech and other research-based organizations source, acquire and manage the materials and processes associated with developing new products," said SciQuest CEO Stephen Wiehe.
SciQuest products target five key areas of the innovation supply chain, including e-procurement with its SelectSite hosted catalog management and e-procurement solutions that offer domain-specific, configurable supplier content and that automate requisitioning, sourcing, approval routing and order management for life sciences and industrial research organizations. HigherMarkets solutions address the procurement needs of the higher education organization.
For materials management, the provider offers integrated enterprise materials management solutions inventory, track and monitor critical assets through its Enterprise Reagent Manager, Substance Manager and Biologicals Manager solutions (the latter launching in 2003).
The research tools available in Analytical Chemistry Manager, Gene Construction Kit and Gene Inspector give researchers data visualization, manipulation and analysis capabilities.
SciQuest offers supplier enablement through a transaction network and it seeks to connect buyers and suppliers by aggregating and distributing domain-specific supplier and product information.
Finally, the provider offers professional services that include technical consulting, project planning, integration and training services to deploy SciQuest solutions.
